Skip to main content
Glite Dictionary
📢 To exaggerate 🎟️ To sell too many
to oversell

to oversell

1 4.5
Sell more of something than you can supply
  • verb
  • /ˌoʊvərˈsɛl/
translation icon : vender en exceso
  • They can bet against the stock by overselling the IPO and refusing to defend the IPO price.

And he'd gotten a coach coach ticket and they oversold coach and they oversold first class.

Autoplay Next

Examples

  • Are they overselling meals like airlines oversell tickets?

    Blog text (29)

  • So now you went into the room and you oversold, right?

  • So now you went into the room and you oversold, right?

  • Are they overselling meals like airlines oversell tickets?

    Blog text (29)

  • Kruger says the activities board was within 40 tickets of selling out the lower capacity when it took sales offline to avoid overselling the show.

    Blog text (31)

  • And he'd gotten a coach coach ticket and they oversold coach and they oversold first class.

    Stanford

  • The concert organizers accidentally oversell the tickets, leaving many fans without admission.

  • Due to a system error, they oversold the available hotel rooms during the festival weekend.

  • When they oversell the inventory, customers may receive notifications that their orders cannot be fulfilled.

Synonyms

to overbook
vsto oversell
13 3.7

Sell or accept more bookings than there is space for

sell more items than exist, causing some orders to go unfilled

How Oversold

to overbook
13 3.7
to oversell
1 4.5

Surface Forms

oversell infinitive
overselling present participle
oversells third person singular
oversold past
oversold past participle

Morphology

oversell = sell (transparent) = over + sell

This sense is the literal idea of selling in excess of available supply (over + sell), which learners can readily infer.

Etymology

Oversell comes from the parts over- meaning 'too much' and sell meaning 'to offer for sale'. So, to oversell tickets or items is to sell more than you have and leave people without what they ordered.